Media News is momentarily discontinued.

The Data Journalism Handbook is a free, open-source book that aims to
help journalists to use data to improve the news. It will be launched on
Saturday 28th April, at Italy’s leading journalism event, the
International Journalism Festival in Perugia, which attracts thousands
of journalists from around the world for a week of talks and workshops.
The book is an international, collaborative effort involving dozens of
data journalism’s leading advocates and best practitioners - including
from Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, the Chicago Tribune,
Deutsche Welle, the Guardian, the Financial Times, Helsingin Sanomat, La
Nacion, the New York Times, Pro Publica, the Washington Post, the Texas
Tribune, Verdens Gang, Wales Online, Zeit Online and many others.
The Data Journalism Handbook is an initiative of the European Journalism
Centre and the Open Knowledge Foundation.
The book will be freely available at datajournalismhandbook.org under a
Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike License. Additionally a printed
version and an e-book will be published by O’Reilly Media.

News media outlets are increasingly realizing that online readers are
finding their websites’ content through people sharing stories on social
media. Finding a way to sell advertising against those readers has been a
challenge. The New York Times Co. unveiled Thursday a new social-media advertising
program that attempts to address that quandary. Called Ricochet, the
program lets marketers pick a select number of stories from Times Co.
properties, such as the Times or Boston Globe, that are relevant to
their social media audiences and create special links for sharing those
stories. Anyone clicking on the social media links will see the
marketer’s ads next to the stories for a specified period of time.
To keep a dividing line between editorial and advertising, advertisers
won’t be able to pick stories that mention their brands for at least a
week after the stories have run. The program’s launch client is SAP, the business software company, which
is picking Times stories about topics like big data and cloud computing.
It will share these stories with its 127,000 Facebook friends, 47,000
Twitter followers, 113,000 LinkedIn followers and 2,000 YouTube
followers. Anyone of those people clicking on the stories will see ads
from a new SAP ad campaign that rolled out last week.

American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop is
launching a visual history project online to retrace some of the most
significant moments in the history of investigative reporting.
The website, “Investigating Power,” was launched Wednesday night at the
National Press Club. Professor Charles Lewis, a former producer for
CBS’s “60 Minutes” and for ABC News, is leading the project.
Contributors include Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, former Washington
Post editor Ben Bradlee, Post reporter Dana Priest and Seymour Hersh.
Lewis also interviewed journalists Mike Wallace and Daniel Schorr before
they died about how they did their work. Organizers say the project examines six areas where journalism brought
“truth to power.” They include the McCarthy era, Civil Rights, the
Vietnam war, the Watergate scandal, post-9/11 America and corporate
power.

The
Committee to Protect Journalists has launched a Journalist Security
Guide, to help freelance journalists stay safe while working on stories.
The guide, published online on Thursday, provides advice on how to handle
dangerous situations, including issues of digital security, natural
disasters and organised crime. In a statement, primary author Frank Smyth, senior advisor for
journalist security to CPJ and executive director of Global Journalist
Security, said: "Today's journalist is covering an increasingly
dangerous world, operating in a climate where journalists are not only
frequently killed, but murdered with impunity."
"Investigating corruption or abuse of power can be more dangerous in
many nations than covering combat. In this climate, journalists need to
know how to protect their information, their sources, themselves and
their families."

A suicide bomber and a man armed with explosives attacked two Nigerian
newspaper offices on Thursday, killing seven people and wounding at
least 26. The radical Islamic sect Boko Haram claimed responsibility.
Boko Haram said it coordinated the attacks on Nigeria's major daily
newspaper ThisDay in the capital, Abuja, and an office building it
shares with two other newspapers in the city of Kaduna. It threatened to
target other journalists in the future. In a statement published Thursday night by the Premium Times website, a
spokesman for Boko Haram said it would attack media again over what the
group felt was inaccurate media coverage. The sect is blamed for killing
more than 440 people this year alone in its growing sectarian fight
against Nigeria's weak central government, according to an Associated
Press count. The sect spokesman particularly blamed ThisDay for publishing stories
the group found inaccurate. The newspaper is owned by media mogul Nduka
Obaigbena, whose flashy events in Nigeria have drawn celebrities from
former U.S. President Bill Clinton to rapper Jay-Z. Obaigbena also has
strong ties to the country's elite and the ruling People's Democratic
Party.

After being unavailable for many decades, Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”
will finally be published in Germany.
Until now, the state of Bavaria has used its copyright over the book to
prevent it from appearing. That copyright is finally set to expire in 2015, 70 years after Hitler’s
death. According to the BBC, Bavaria is publishing the work before the
expiration date in order to “demystify” it and make it commercially
unattractive for private publishers. The book, which translates as “My Struggle”, combines biography with a
description of Hitler’s emerging ideology. The book has been frequently
described as boring and unreadable. The book is not illegal in Germany but is effectively unavailable
because of the Bavarian copyright. It has long been available in other
countries. Amazon has a dozen editions of Mein Kampf for sale.
Bavaria’s decision to publish not only raises questions about public
policy but also about the practicality of banning books in the digital
age. While school districts in America have often tried to ban works like
Catcher in the Rye, such books are now in easy reach of anyone with a
keyboard or an e-reader.

Harvard is making public the information on more than 12 million books, videos, audio recordings,
images, manuscripts, maps, and more things inside its 73 libraries.
Harvard can’t put the actual content of much of this material online,
owing to intellectual property laws, but this so-called metadata of
things like titles, publication or recording dates, book sizes or
descriptions of what is in videos is also considered highly valuable.
Frequently descriptors of things like audio recordings are more valuable
for search engines than the material itself. Search engines frequently
rely on metadata over content, particularly when it cannot easily be
scanned and understood. Harvard is hoping other libraries allow access to the metadata on their
volumes, which could be the start of a large and unique repository of
intellectual information. Harvard plans also to eventually include circulation data on the items
as well, said Stuart Shieber, director of Harvard’s Office for Scholarly
Communication, who oversaw the project. The release follows Harvard’s decision, via the Office for ScholarlyCommunications to release much of the published research from its
faculty free. The metadata will be available for bulk download both from
Harvard and from the Digital Public Library of America, which is an
effort to create a national public library online.

A sergeant will be discharged for criticising President Barack Obama on
Facebook in a case that calls into question the Pentagon's policies
about social media and its limits on the speech of active duty military
personnel. Sergeant Gary Stein will get an other-than-honourable discharge and lose
most of his benefits for violating the policies, the Marine Corps said.
The San Diego-area Marine who has served nearly 10 years in the Corps
said he was disappointed by the decision. He has argued that he was
exercising his free-speech rights. Gary Kreep, an attorney for Stein, said he would pursue administrative
appeals within the Marine Corps but anticipates the effort will be
denied. He said he planned to file an amended complaint in federal
court. The Marines acted after saying Stein stated on 1 March on a Facebook
page used by Marine meterologists, "Screw Obama and I will not follow
all orders from him." Stein later clarified that statement saying he
would not follow unlawful orders. The military has had a policy since the Civil War limiting the free
speech of service members, including criticism of the commander in
chief.

Demonstrators who claim Tunisia's state television network is
backing the ousted Ben Ali dictatorship ended nearly eight weeks of
sit-ins Wednesday after the government asked them to leave.
Dozens of protesters had been camped outside the offices of Wataniya
since March 2 in the capital Tunis, demanding the "cleansing" of the
national broadcaster and jeering at journalists.
Sit-in organiser Halima Maalej told reporters that demonstrators agreed
to an interior ministry request to pack up after the government promised
to address their concerns. Protests at Wataniya had grown increasingly tense in recent days, with
demonstrators brandishing mops and cleaning equipment and angrily
yelling their intention to "cleanse" the broadcaster and some of its
1,300 employees. Journalists had a shouting match Monday with protesters and five people
were injured in scuffles Tuesday. Relations are strained between state media and Ennahda, a moderate
Islamist party that won elections in October and now leads the governing
coalition. Also Wednesday, the United Nations' cultural body UNESCO announced it
would hold a three-day programme of events in Tunis to celebrate World
Press Freedom Day on May 3.

Led by YouTube, Pandora and Netflix, video and audio streaming make up
more than half of mobile data traffic, In North America the latest
Internet traffic trends report from Sandvine has revealed.
In the “Global Internet Phenomena Report 1H2012 ”, based on data from a
selection of Sandvine’s 200-plus customers spanning North America,
Europe, Middle East and Africa, Caribbean and Latin America and
Asia-Pacific, YouTube was found to be the largest source of mobile video
traffic in every region examined, accounting for as much as 25 percent of
network data and no less than 12 percent. The data also revealed that home roaming accounts for 9 percent of total fixed
traffic on North America’s household networks and that audio and video
streaming will exceed 60 percent of North America’s mobile data by late 2014.
Smartphones and tablets were driving 9 percent of traffic on fixed access
networks including 16 percent of all real time entertainment, 28 percent of which from
YouTube and 9 percent from Netflix. Sandvine believes that click-to-cloud smartphone photo back-up and
synchronisation will emerge as a significant source of traffic
worldwide: the phenomena of the continuous cloud/client connection. This
said the company would see operators worldwide adding an intelligence
layer across their networks.

For the next 12 days, readers can get free access to BostonGlobe.com by
entering their email address. “The impetus for the free trial is getting the word out on new features,
including the Boston Globe e-paper,” said Peter Doucette, Executive
Director, Circulation Sales & Marketing. The e-paper is what is known as a “replica” and mimics the traditional
look and feel of a newspaper on a screen or tablet. BostonGlobe.com launched last October but so far sign-ups have been
sluggish. The site has only attracted 18,000 paid subscribers so far.
Part of the challenge may be cannibalization from the paper’s affiliated
site Boston.com which pre-dates the new site but also draws on content
from the Boston Globe. The freebie offer lasts for 12 days and is sponsored by Coldwell Banker
Residential Brokerage. Other papers, including the New York Times and
the Wall Street Journal, have done similar promotions in which a select
sponsor takes down a paywall, or part of it, for a short time.
The Globe is also offering a 99-cent week introductory offer the first
eight weeks. The site is free for print subscribers.

Google is using technology to try to curb violent extremism around the
world. Working with a think tank, venture philanthropists, and other
partners, Google Ideas helped launch a new online network called AgainstViolent Extremism (AVE). "What do a former violent jihadist from Indonesia, an ex-neo-Nazi from
Sweden and a Canadian who was held hostage for 15 months in Somalia have
in common?" director of Google Ideas Jared Cohen wrote in a blog post
Wednesday. "In addition to their past experiences with radicalization, they
are all also members of Against Violent Extremism." AVE's goal is to bring together former extremists, survivors,
nonprofits, academics, and private sector leaders to combine forces and
use online tools to figure out how to prevent people from becoming
radicalized. Google Ideas was founded in October 2010 by Cohen who previously worked
on the U.S. State Department's Policy Planning staff. The plan was to
create what he calls a "think/do tank" and use technology to deal with
human challenges, such as gang violence, war, and extremism. Still in beta, the AVE Web site will be managed by the London-based
think tank Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Google Ideas' partner. The
site will have videos, research, online tools, forums, and an
interactive map that lists nearby events, people, and resources.

China has stepped up its campaign to clamp down on the Internet,
which has emerged as a virtual town square for exchanging information
about the Bo Xilai scandal and the nation's biggest political upheaval
in years. The popular Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo on Tuesday
deleted the accounts of several users, including that of Li Delin, a
senior editor of the Chinese business magazine Capital Week, whose March
19 post helped fuel rumors of a coup in Beijing. The service announced
the move to many of its more than 300 million user accounts, thereby
turning it into a public lesson in the consequences of rumor mongering.
Media insiders describe a heavy hand at the nation's newspapers, with
the government at times giving strict instructions on what stories about
Mr. Bo could run. Discussion of the matter nonetheless has continued,
fueled in part by social media and independent news websites outside of
Beijing's control. It is unclear whether the Sina notice was ordered by government
authorities, who require Sina and other Chinese websites to police their
own content, or if Sina itself issued the warning. But it is the most
direct warning yet to Internet users to rein in the freewheeling
discussion for which Sina Weibo is known.

AOL is launching an online video network that will gather its
programming onto one platform, the latest bid by a major Internet
destination to be a player in Web television. The company announced the video hub, the AOL On Network, on Tuesday at a
presentation of programming to advertisers in New York. It said the
network will feature 14 content channels available online, on mobile, on
tablets and through TV-connected devices. AOL On will pull from some 320,000 short-form videos from AOL and its
many publishers. The company also announced seven new original series.
AOL Inc. has been trying to generate more revenue from ad-supported
content to make up for reductions in its older Internet access business.
AOL and other websites see expanded video offerings as a way to increase
revenue because the video ads that run with them can command higher
prices. The event Tuesday was part of the inaugural Digital Content NewFronts,
in which digital outlets like YouTube and Yahoo are presenting their
programming slates in the style of television upfronts.

A crusading reporter who "breathed, dreamed and lived journalism 24
hours a day" was gunned down as he ate dinner, and colleagues said
Tuesday they are certain he was killed because of his work.
Decio Sa, a political reporter for the newspaper O Estado do Maranhao in
northeastern Brazil, was at least the fourth journalist slain this year
in the South American nation, one of the deadliest for reporters to work
in. A gunman fired six bullets into Sa's head and chest in a restaurant in
the state capital of Sao Luis on Monday night. He died instantly, and
the killer fled on a motorcycle driven by an accomplice who was waiting
outside, the Maranhao state public safety department said in a
statement. Brazil's National Newspaper Association said on its website that Sa was
killed because of his "courageous coverage of crimes committed by hired
gunmen." "He was the fourth journalist to be murdered in Brazil in 2012,
highlighting the pernicious effect of the impunity that surrounds
attempts made against professionals who work to better inform citizens,"
the statement added. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says on its website
that 21 Brazilian journalists have been killed since 1992.

Exasperated by rising subscription costs charged by academic publishers,
Harvard University has encouraged its faculty members to make their
research freely available through open access journals and to resign
from publications that keep articles behind paywalls.
A memo from Harvard Library to the university's 2,100 teaching and
research staff called for action after warning it could no longer afford
the price hikes imposed by many large journal publishers, which bill the
library around USD 3.5m a year. The extraordinary move thrusts one of the world's wealthiest and most
prestigious institutions into the centre of an increasingly fraught
debate over access to the results of academic research, much of which is
funded by the taxpayer. The outcome of Harvard's decision to take on the publishers will be
watched closely by major universities around the world and is likely to
prompt others to follow suit. The memo from Harvard's faculty advisory council said major publishers
had created an "untenable situation" at the university by making
scholarly interaction "fiscally unsustainable" and "academically
restrictive", while drawing profits of 35 percent or more. Prices for online
access to articles from two major publishers have increased 145 percent over
the past six years, with some journals costing as much as USD 40,000, the
memo said. More than 10,000 academics have already joined a boycott of Elsevier,
the huge Dutch publisher, in protest at its journal pricing and access
policies. Many university libraries pay more than half of their journal
budgets to the publishers Elsevier, Springer and Wiley.

The Wall Street Journal on Monday unveiled Markets Pulse, a platform for
a continuous flow of news — including blog posts, articles, videos,
tweets, photos, and other elements — that readers can dip into
throughout the day from their computers or from a mobile device. The
idea is to provide more choices to readers who are increasingly seeking
news on-the-go. Markets Pulse is built around an
area of coverage rather than a finite event, which means it has the
potential to be neverending.
Markets Pulse also includes an embed of the Journal’s video player right
next to the content whenever a live show is on. With the newspaper’s big
push in video, particularly live video, having a page that is always on could help increase
the return on that investment.
It also gives reporters a place to put all kinds of information — short
updates, tweets, and other elements that don’t always fit in a
traditional article. The format may also help drive traffic to Wall Street Journal content by
fostering a habit of checking for frequent bite-sized updates the same
way that people routinely check their email inboxes and Twitter feeds.
News streams also seem to have the advantage of stickiness — meaning
readers spend time on streams longer than they do on traditional news
sites.

New startup Assignmint has an ambitious goal: To change freelance
journalism as we know it. The company, headed by former New York Press
and Forbes Traveler editor Jeff Koyen, will offer a complete
pitch-to-payment cloud workflow system for freelancers and their
employers. It helps digitally manage work assignments, editorial
calendars, invoices, pitches, expenses, contract information, and
payment. Freelance journalists, meanwhile, will be able to have access
to all their outstanding invoice and payment information in one place.
The startup also plans to implement a clip and algorithm service to
match freelancers with potential new clients.
While Assignmint will only handle writers and editors when it launches
in late 2012, the firm plans to open their doors to freelancers and
employers from the rest of media - along with financial services,
academia, IT, fashion marketing, and other fields in 2013. The company's
profit model is based upon their payment system: Assignmint will handle
freelance payments on an company's behalf in exchange for an
employer-paid service fee. Other revenue streams will include premium
subscriptions for editorial teams, white-label enterprise installations,
and custom services such as tax form fulfillment.

For the first time ever, a study commissioned by the Association of
Commercial Television in Europe (ACT), quantifies the aggregate
programming spend of Europe’s commercial broadcasters. The study,
Audiovisual Content and Online Growth, pegs the contribution of
commercial broadcasters to the European Digital Economy at EUR 15bn
annually. Philippe Delusinne, CEO of RTL Belgium and president of the ACT, said
these findings were new and contributed to the overall knowledge about
the significance of the sector: “We know that European television is an
EUR 84bn sector – but we did not know until today how much of that revenue
is reinvested in sport, news, entertainment or movies.”
“When the contributions of public broadcasters, and of smaller
operators, are also taken into account” Mr Delusinne added, “we conclude
that overall around 40 percent of broadcasters’ revenues are reinvested in the
next season’s schedule.” The report also shows the strong consumer take-up of the hundreds of new
services launched by commercial broadcasters online, part of the legal
offer of content widely seen as a vital tool against piracy. The report
concludes by looking at the many different ways in which content can
cross frontiers today, and tomorrow – providing there is quantifiable
consumer demand.

Google’s U.S. lobbying bill more than tripled to USD 5m during the first three months of the year amid increased
government scrutiny of the Internet search leader’s business and privacy
practices. The first-quarter expenses for political persuasion are by far the
highest that Google Inc. has rung up for any three-month period since
the company opened a lobbying office in Washington seven years ago. At
the same time last year, Google spent USD 1.48m trying to make its
points with U.S. lawmakers and regulators. The company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., disclosed the
figures in documents filed late Friday with the U.S. Senate secretary’s
office. The total for the most recent quarter is more than the combined lobbying
bills among four of Google’s biggest rivals. Microsoft Corp., Apple
Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Facebook Inc. spent a combined USD 3.6m in the
first quarter. Microsoft, one of the technology industry’s biggest spenders for years,
had been spending more on lobbying than Google until the second quarter
of last year. Google’s lobbying expenses have been rising steadily against a backdrop
of government inquiries triggered by complaints from some of its rivals
and privacy watchdog groups.

Google Inc is preparing to roll out a service to let
consumers store photos and other content online, a source familiar with
the matter said, pushing into a market now dominated by the likes of
Dropbox and Box. The service, to be called Google Drive, could be announced as soon as
Tuesday and would be offered with both free and premium for-pay
versions, the source said. Google's "cloud storage" offering will incorporate search capabilities
and allow users to store pictures, notes and other documents on the
Internet and access them from any Web-connected device.
Consumers will get 5 Gigabytes of storage for free with Google Drive,
while various versions with incrementally more storage capacity, topping
out at about 100 Gibabytes, will be available for monthly fees, the
source said. It was not immediately clear how much Google will charge for the premium
versions. The move turns up the competitive heat with high-profile Web startups
such as Dropbox, Box and Evernote, as well as with Microsoft Corp and
its SkyDrive service. Some of those services, such as Box, have offered an increasing array of
business-oriented features such as online collaboration capabilities.
Google Drive will work with sophisticated image search technology to let
consumers sift through a wide variety of document types, which could
include the likes of Adobe PDF files and photographs, the source said.

Authorities detained Jamal Muhataseb, owner of Jordanian news website
Gerasanews.com, on Monday after he published an article in which it was
alleged that the Royal Court had intervened to stop the indictment of a
former minister. Muhataseb, also chief editor of the Marra weekly newspaper faces charges
of disseminating "anti-regime sentiment," according to colleagues.
Jordan's Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists (CDFJ) condemned
the arrest. The CDFJ described the detention of Muhatseb as a "contradiction" of
repeated pledges by monarch King Abdullah II to maintain "sky-high"
press freedoms in the country. Muhatseb's colleagues also criticized the fact that the allegations
against the journalist were being dealt with by the State Security
Court, a military tribunal. Around 50 journalists held a sit-in protest at the press association's
headquarters in the capital Amman on Monday evening, demanding
Muhataseb's immediate release. On Sunday, Jordanian lawmakers voted not to indict former public housing
minister Sahel Majali on charges of corruption. Majali was involved with the country's Decent Housing for Decent Living
initiative, a multi-billion scheme to provide affordable housing to
low-income families. The scheme failed, mainly because of alleged
corruption that led to inflated construction costs.

Small businesses are known for making low-budget television
advertisements. Now YouTube is encouraging those same mom-and-pop shops
to take their homegrown commercials — and ad dollars — to its platform.
On Monday, YouTube plans to announce a program it hopes will position
the company as a major player in the market for small-business video
advertising. A blog post announcing the news and written by Baljeet Singh, a group
product manager at YouTube, cites the company’s growing audience. “With
a global audience of 800 million monthly visitors to YouTube, every day
can feel like you’re advertising in the Super Bowl, and one video can
launch a business,” Mr. Singh wrote. Many small businesses already buy search advertising on Google, which
owns YouTube, by bidding on key words and setting the budget they are
willing to spend. YouTube will now allow small businesses a similar option with Google
AdWords for video. Advertisers will be able to buy and manage key words
for video ads from the same online tool used for search and display ads.
They will still be able to bid on key words and will pay only when their
ads are watched. To entice advertisers to create their own ads
and buy ad space, YouTube is offering USD 50m in free advertising to
500,000 companies. Companies that are new to YouTube AdWords will
receive a USD 75 credit toward advertising on the site. YouTube has also selected a group of nine small-business owners to be
marketing “ambassadors.”

India has become the top spam-spewing nation on the planet, suggests a
report. Compiled by security firm Sophos, the report ranks nations by the amount
of junk mail routed through computers in each country.
India has leapt to the top of the spam chart in less than a year,
rapidly overtaking the US, said Sophos. About 10 percent of all junk mail sent across the web came from or passed
through computers in India, said the firm. India's rapid rise up the chart of spam producers has been helped by the
rapid growth of the web in the country, said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant at Sophos. The inexperience of the many first-time net users in India had led many
to fall victim to hi-tech criminals, he said. About 80% of all junk email is thought to be routed through PCs hijacked
by hi-tech criminals who use computer viruses to seize control of the
machines. Once a machine is under their control they use them to send
out mail on their behalf, typically relaying it from another nation.
Sophos estimates that about 9.3 percent of all junk mail travels through Indian
computers. In second place is the US (8.3 percent) and South Korea (5.7 percent) is
third. India's rise up the rankings was also helped by the ongoing shift away
from traditional email by spammers. More and more of them, said Sophos,
were using social networks as the route to spread their junk messages.
Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest were all being hit with increasing
regularity by spammers, said Sophos.

The first report to systematically assess how online-only news websites
across Western Europe are faring has found that new start-ups are
struggling to find business models that can cover their operating costs.
The report, published by the Reuters Institute
for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) at Oxford University, finds that
although internet use and online advertising is growing fast across
Europe and there is much experimentation in the online news space, the
stumbling block continues to be the absence of a viable business models
for new forms of journalism. Even the most innovative online enterprises
in Europe have found it difficult to break even. The report, 'Survival
is Success' is based on in-depth analysis of nine case studies from
Germany, France, and Italy - including prominent pure players like
Netzeitung, Mediapart, and Lettera43. The study shows that the start-up
scene in Europe is still at a stage where surviving for more than a few
years is a form of success in itself. Out of nine new start-ups analysed
across the three countries, only two, Mediapart and Perlentaucher, broke
even. Mediapart (in France) is sustained by a pay-wall system around
quality niche content, while Perlentaucher (from Germany) survives by
combining very limited costs with a highly diversified business model.

While the print newspaper industry has been crippled in developed
western countries which are battling digital alternatives, Asian
countries are actually witnessing a major boom in newspaper paid
circulation. The growing trend for paid circulation in Asia has increased at a rate
of 16 percent during the five-year period between 2006 and 2010,
according to an upcoming World Press Trends 2011 report.
The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-INFRA) said
that India, China, and Japan are the world's largest newspaper markets
with paid circulations of 110 million, 109 million, and 50 million,
respectively. Combined, these three countries' circulations make up more than half of
the world's total percentage of paid circulation.
Moreover, 67 of the world's 100 largest daily newspapers are based in
Asia, reports Asia 360°. These figures represent a stark contrast to the steep decline in
newspaper print circulation in the United States and Europe.
But In Asia, fast economic growth over the last 30 years
has led to higher literacy rates as millions have been lifted out of
poverty - driving new readership toward newspapers. In addition, limited Internet reach prevents free, online news from
competing with the traditional subscription model.

Helsingin Sanomat is the first Finnish media company to provide its new
subscribers with the option to combine their newspaper subscription with
a new iPad. With the iPad, Helsingin Sanomat can be read digitally
anywhere. The development of a new, package-based subscription method
was requested by consumers. "Our goal is for it to be as convenient as possible to read the digital
edition. More than 50 percent of Finns who took our consumer survey are very or
rather interested in the option to also include an iPad in their paper
subscription," says Petteri Putkiranta, Vice President, Development at
Helsingin Sanomat. According to Sanoma's international iPad survey, tablets are already
among the most popular online devices in households which possess one.
They are used at the morning coffee table, on the sofa and in the bed.
"HS Digilehti has the editorial content of
Helsingin Sanomat in digital format. Our iPad app also includes
Kuukausiliite and Nyt, the latest news on HS.fi and a location-specific
weather service. In addition to the iPad, you can also read HS Digilehti
using your computer or mobile phone," says Petteri Putkiranta.

According to a recent study published by Kantar Media, the number of
internet users generating content (UGC) - reading articles or commenting
- varies significantly by country, but Latin America features on the
top. 47 percent of internet users in Brazil and 44 percent in Argentina read UGC on
newspaper websites, compared to only 35 percent in GB and 26 percent in Germany.
Latin American countries also have the highest rates of activity in
submitting articles or comment on the websites of newspaper publishers,
with 27 percent in Brazil and 26 percent in Argentina. This drops to only 17 percent in
Germany and 12 percent in GB. Regarding how important are the truth and how much users trust the
websites they visited, Kantar Media found that in Brazil people show a
73 percent of agreement and in Argentina only 71 percent - a factor that may help to
explain the acceptance and willingness to contribute to content.

BlackBerry users suffered another small indignity Friday, when Google
disclosed that they’ll no longer get support for Google Synch. It’s one
of the “spring cleaning” steps Google announced Friday, following chief
executive Larry Page’s guidance to pare down the company’s less popular
products. Google’s One Pass payment platform for online news publishers has been
shut down too, with the suggestion that Google Consumer Surveys and
other platforms would work as an alternative.
Also deemed unnecessary the mobile app for Google Talk, which has been
supplanted by platform-specific apps, the dedicated Google Patent
Search, and the Google Flu Vaccine Finder (which now offers visitors the
HealthMap Flu Vaccine Finder instead). The photo service Picasa is also
being cut back, ceasing to offer the uploader for Mac, the plug-in for
iPhoto, and updates for Linux. Among the less well-known services, Google is killing off its Google
Related toolbar, which suggested information that might be relevant to a
person’s search, like an address or map.

YouTube could face a huge bill for royalties after it lost a court
battle in Germany over music videos. A court in Hamburg ruled that YouTube is responsible for the content
that users post to the video sharing site. It wants the video site to install filters that spot when users try to
post music clips whose rights are held by royalty collection group,
Gema. The German industry group said in court that YouTube had not done enough
to stop copyrighted clips being posted.
YouTube said it took no responsibility for what users did, but responded
when told of copyright violations. Gema's court case was based on 12 separate music clips posted to the
website. The ruling concerns seven of the 12 clips. If YouTube is forced to pay royalties for all the clips used on the site
it will face a huge bill. Gema represents about 60,000 German song writers and musicians.
If enforced, the ruling could also slow the rate at which video is
posted to the site as any music clip would have to be cleared for
copyright before being used. Currently, it is estimated that about 60 hours of video is uploaded to
YouTube worldwide every minute.